


Confiteor

by Dien



Category: Castle Waiting
Genre: Gen, faith - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 21:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sister Peace's ministry at Castle Waiting is disrupted by a plea for last rites from someone from her past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confiteor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jude](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude/gifts).



Pindar really was an exceptionally lovely shade of green, Sister Peace thought to herself as she watched the Lady Jain dandle her growing Brussels-sprout of a child on her lap. Like a green tomato before the frying. She chuckled at the thought, waved away the inquisitive look Jain shot her, and ripped another chunk of bread off the loaf to hand up to Piety, who sat on her shoulder with the same miffed air he had since the child had first been born and he had found himself relegated to second place in his mistress's affections. Still, the kyrkogrim took the offered morsel quickly enough.

“Lovely day for a picnic, isn't it?” Peace said, peering out over the marvelous ocean view the castle's battlements afforded.

“The loveliest,” Jain said with a happy sigh. “I thought winter was never going to _end...”_

“'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven',” Peace quoted with a smile and a shrug. Jain responded with an aggrieved look.

“That may _be, _but four months of rain is staying a _bit_ past its due,” she answered, raising her carved wooden cup for a sip of water.

Peace's answer was cut short by the exuberantly wet froth that exploded from the cup over Jain and Pindar both. “ _ I _ say you can  _ never _ have too much rain, that's what I say!” Old Man River said with a leer as Jain shrieked. “You know why I say that? Because I like you ladies all good and we--”

The nun whacked the river spirit with the loaf before he could complete his sentence, and with an indignant gurgle River splortled over the flagstones of the wall. “I was just going to say there's someone coming,” came his liquid voice as he flowed sulkily away through cracks in the stone. “There's no call to be  _ rude _ ...”

“Rude? Rude? Oh, I'll give you rude if Pin catches a cold,” Jain growled as she mopped herself and her child up, but Peace was already standing, shading her eyes with her hand as she looked towards the road that led up to the castle. Yes, there was a rider, although this far off no details other than a bright red cap could be seen atop the figure's head.

“Well, well, let's see what the day holds, then,” she murmured, and set the now-sodden loaf down on the ramparts, for either an enterprising seagull, or, more likely, one of the brownies to seize on. She collected the picnic basket Dinah had packed for them, and let Jain precede her down the tower stairs with Pindar over her shoulder.

As they descended the spiral staircase, Sister Peace made faces at Pindar dutifully, smiling at his answering gurgles, but she couldn't shake a feeling of foreboding.

_Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof...._

***

A young woman stood in the courtyard, ignoring Rackham, who was attempting to greet her politely, in favor of holding a hostile staring contest with Iron Henry. Peace hid half a smile; you might as well hold the contest with Henry's tools as the man himself. Henry showed no signs of picking up on the hostility in the girl's stare, merely stood by the reins stolidly as Rackham bid the lass welcome to Castle Waiting, had she traveled far, was she in need of refreshment, what was her name...?

Peace sized the girl up as she crossed the courtyard towards her, her hands folded into her habit's sleeves. Young, yes; perhaps fifteen, sixteen? She had dismounted her horse, a magnificent beast, but carried herself as though she still had the lofty height advantage the creature gave her. She was dressed in a tough leather jerkin that bore the marks of a blade here and there, and more than a few stains; this even more than the brace of pistols at her belt suggested a life lived hard and dangerously. The crimson cap atop her black hair was the brightest thing about her, and her dark eyes flashed with wariness as she took them all in. Her lips seemed curved into a perpetual cynical sneer.

The girl glanced up from Henry as Peace approached, and strode towards her with a gloved finger thrust the nun's way. “You,” she said, quite talking over Rackham's continued attempts at pleasantries. “I've come for you.”

***

Peace sipped some of Dinah's remarkable hot chocolate and regarded the girl shrewdly over the edge of the mug. Jillian, the lass's name was. She supposed she could see the resemblance, now... to be sure, for all of her acquaintance with Jillian's mother the other woman had had a thick and scraggly black beard covering half her face (which Jillian did not appear to have inherited) so some things, like the jawline, she could only guess at...

“...the old goat is half a day's ride from here, so will you come or not?” Jillian said, arms crossed, booted feet atop the table. She seemed indifferent to the brutal glower Dinah was shooting her.

“I'll come,” Peace said mildly, and wiped chocolate foam from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “Although you don't sound as if you much want me to.”

The young woman shrugged. “Oh, it's all the same to me if you do or not,” she tossed off. “I told her I'd carry the message. I don't are if she dies shriven or not.”

Rackham was against it, and cornered her as soon as they were out of earshot of the girl. “I am really not sure this is entirely  _ safe, _ Sister Peace,” he said, the feather-nubs on his wrinkled scalp all bristling on end. “The young lady seems-- well-- somewhat  _ disreputable.” _

“Somewhat?” Peace echoed with a grin. “That's like saying you're _somewhat skinny,_ Steward. All the same, I'm going. Her mother's an old-- …friend. And even if she weren't....”

“Yes, yes, you're a Solicitine, it's what you do, I know,” Rackham groused, and rubbed at his temples. “All the same, I _do_ wish Chess were here to accompany you.”

Peace smiled, and squeezed Rackham's shoulder. “It's not as if I'm going  _ alone, _ you know,” she said cheerfully.

“Ah yes? --ah, yes, that is, of course, well, I am sure your faith does you credit, but-- but something more... _substantial_ than the Good Lord might be--”

“Who said anything about _Him_?” Peace chortled. “I'm talking about Piety. After four months cooped up inside, he's in foul enough a mood to bite the hand off anyone who tries to touch me. Have a little faith, Rackham.”

***

The Castle Waiting rose behind them, and Peace at least did not look back at the walls where Jain and the others were waving their farewells. Her velocipede creaked along the muddy road behind Jillian's horse, its clunky wooden wheels kicking up globs of dirt.  _ Good thing the habit's black _ , she thought to herself.

And at least it was a nice day for a ride, even if one with a grim purpose. Sister Peace sighed under her breath as she considered Jillian's back, the insolent way the girl sat the saddle. Yes, she did take a bit after her mother...

'Hairy Mary', she'd been called, a bandit who'd come to the Solicitine order seeking shelter from officers of some king or another's law. She'd spun a good story-- that had left  _ out _ her own crimes, and painted herself quite well as a victim they could all relate to in some fashion or other, because of the shared bond of hair growing on chins. Peace snorted at the recollection, and raised a hand to rub at the bit of her wimple that covered her own scruff. Funny, that, how as useful as their beards were in helping them to relate to outcasts from all stripes of life-- sometimes it could help blind you too. Make you an all-day sucker.

Of course, the dupery hadn't lasted. Eventually the Abbess and the rest of the convent had seen through Mary's ways, as small but expensive items started disappearing inexplicably. Then had come the conversations with Mary, the tearful confessions, the promises to change her ways...

Rinse and repeat. Eventually the Abbess had put her foot down and sent Mary packing, but not before a much younger Sister Peace had taken it as her personal Heaven-sent duty to try and help 'save' Hairy Mary.

She sighed-- and it turned into a yelp as a large rock appeared in the road out of absolutely nowhere, necessitating a last-minute swerve of her velocipede and a few moments of mad wobbling to keep her balance.

Jillian turned a cool eye back on her. “I've no intention of dawdling if you can't keep up,” the girl said as she watched Peace's attempts to keep the contraption from veering off the road.

“Oh, don't you worry about me,” Peace muttered, and kept firm hold of Piety's leash to keep him from going for Jill's bright red cap. Although, she thought grimly, it might do the girl a world of good to have a church-grim take a bite out of that attitude. Tempting...

_ Tempting. _ Seized by sudden suspicion, she shot a quick glance back the road to that treacherous rock that had sent her off path. Sure enough-- there was Leeds, sitting in the middle of the track on his stumpy legs and grinning fit to shame the moon. The grin dropped to a scowl when he realized he'd been found out, and he winked out of existence in a puff of brimstone, only to reappear in her velocipede's basket atop the provisions she'd brought.

“You are no fun at all,” he hissed.

“You're going to squish my macaroons,” she retorted, equally low.

“Good, then nobody else can eat them and I'll get the pieces!”

“Oh yeah? Sit a little further down and you'll hit my Bible instead. A smoldering tail is not a flattering look.”

Leeds glowered up at her with his demonic little eyes, and hopped up to settle between the handlebars instead. He shifted around, to perch there and watch Mary's daughter riding ahead of them.

“You're wasting your time,” he said with a certain undeniable note of smug self-satisfaction.

“How do you figure? She's asking for last rites,” Peace sniffed. “If that isn't a sign of repentance I don't know what is.”

“Shriven, schmiven,” the little demon snorted. “A lifetime of crime, murder, and preying on the defenseless-- this one's _ours,_ Sister! Say whatever words you like, you can't save her!”

“Anyone can be saved,” Peace said, jaw set.

“Only those that want to, Sis,” Leeds answered with an audible grin. “So... there's macaroons down in here?”

***

She tried several times to start a conversation with Jillian, but pedaling the velocipede fast enough to keep up with Jillian's horse left one a bit short for breath, however in shape one happened to be. In any case, the girl seemed to have no interest for talk, and Peace soon settled into grim silence of her own. Leeds was asleep between the handlebars now, his toes curled around them-- no conversation partner there.

She'd never have admitted it to him, but Peace was just as glad the little stinker was asleep. She didn't feel up to an argument right now, at least not on this front.

The last they'd heard at the convent, Mary was back to her old ways, leaving a trail behind her of bloodshed and robbery. She had a band of her own, and tales filtered back to the Solicitine's ears of predations not just on merchants and noblemen but on farmer families and woodcutter's huts out in the forest.

Sister Peace had been known in her life to turn an eye to a nicked coin here and there, but there was a  _ line, _ and Mary had been so far past it she'd have needed a spyglass to find it again...

The other sisters hadn't had much in the way of good words for Mary, not that Peace blamed them. The other woman had smuggled out the bulk of the harvest's premier oatnog as her final offense against Solicitine hospitality-- depriving the abbey of the profits needed to get in that year's supplies. There'd been a lot of grumbling against the absent woman, in the lean months that had followed.

Peace had held out hope, though. All through winter, and into spring-- perhaps Mary would return, remorseful, stricken by the knowledge of her deeds... she didn't, of course. And then Peace had told herself, when she eventually prepared to leave the convent and rejoin the outside world again, that perhaps she'd run into Mary, talk some sense into her thick head. That hadn't happened either.

A shame. Mary was bright, charismatic, energetic-- what a force for the Order she'd have made...!

A raindrop hit the end of Peace's generous nose, and she glanced up to see that the nice day had become gray and bleak. She scowled at the sky and hunched her shoulders, even as Piety sought shelter from the water by trying to burrow under her habit's headpiece.

“Ow-- mind the claws--” she winced, and pedaled faster. The rain might match her mood, but up ahead Jillian was steering for a copse of trees-- shelter sounded good right now.

The road curved up, and the going became harder. Eventually Sister Peace had to get off and push the velocipede up the slope, eliciting a sneer from Jillian but no offer to help, of course. “Look for the campfire and torches,” the girl tossed off, with a vague gesture forward into the trees. “I'm not waiting for you.”

She slapped her mount's quarters and the beast surged forward, leaving Peace trudging up the road with only a hydrophobic kyrkogrim, a sleeping demon, and the sullen rain for company.

***

Under the trees, water dripped from the leaves and needles-- Piety showed no inclination to emerge from under her wimple-- but at least the mud wasn't as pronounced. Peace eyed the bottom hem of her habit, generously splotched and splattered to brown from her knees down, and then set her jaw and raised her chin to regard the bandits.

A hard lot, yes. Mostly men, who looked back at her with a mixture of contemptuous humor and outright hostility. The women in the group looked no more friendly. A man with a scar running the full length of his face was slowly sharpening a knife, shnik, shnik, shnik-- that, Peace noted to herself, was a sound that could get to you.

She decided a cheerful wave was in order, and followed it up with the gesture of blessing. “Peace be on you... and you... and you... gosh, can you really lift that axe? Well, peace definitely be on you, then-- so where's Mary?”

One of the robbers spat in the dirt, while another, stringing a crossbow, grinned humorlessly and said they none of them had much use for peace. Jillian merely pointed to a crude tent on the other side of the rough camp. “The old goat's in there, if she's still alive.”

“Right. Anybody want a macaroon?”

She fished the package out under the bandits' bemused looks, unwrapped the waxed paper, and grabbed two cookies for Mary before handing the rest over to Scarface. “Pass them around and remember to share!” she said brightly, stuffing the little bottle of wine from her basket into her sleeve as well. Leeds was still perched on her handlebars asleep; she paid him no mind. Nobody saw  _ him _ unless he wanted them to.

So... she looked at the tent. Just canvas stretched over a rope, really.... Peace crouched low, and ducked in, and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

“You came,” husked a voice from the shadows of the tent. Mary, yes. Her voice rougher and older, but still here.

“So I did,” said Peace, and brought out the wine bottle from her sleeve. “One last communion, huh, Mary?”

There was a low chuckle, and a match was lit; a sudden flare in the darkness of the tent, illuminating the side of Mary's face, her black beard gone to long grey, a gold ring glinting in one ear, the bowl of her pipe. Shining also on the crossbow aimed directly at Peace's dangling crucifix.

“Peace, you really are a fool. Back up out of the tent, now, there's a good girl. And hands high. ...but leave the wine.”

The bandits ringed her round, jeering and grinning, as she backed up out of the tent. Jillian had her pistols drawn now, and spun them lazily on her fingers, flashing an insolent grin at her. Mary came after her, the crossbow leveled with a practiced hand, a crooked smirk on her face.

“You Solicitines. You never _do_ learn.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Peace watched Leeds stir on the velocipede, waking up. Oh, she wasn't going to hear the end of this from him, she thought sourly.

“No, I guess we don't,” she said to Hairy Mary, with a bit of a snap to it. “Well, I don't have to use any of the medicine we learned at the convent to see _you're_ not dying.”

“I've never been better,” Mary answered, grinning around the stem of her pipe. “Have a seat, Peace. Coo, what a lark! I was fit to burst laughing as you told my lads 'peace on you, peace on you'! God bless you indeed for the joke we've all had.”

Peace took a deep breath, and sat down on the damp log indicated by Jillian's wave of her pistol. “You know, you could've asked me to come take tea, or swing round for a friendly game of cards, and I would've said yes,” she said a bit archly, crossing her arms. “Well, what is it you want, Mary?”

“What is it me and my lads ever want?” Mary asked, with a conspiratorial glance around the group. “Gold, Sister. Gold and riches.”

“I'm a bit short on those, you'll have to make do with macaroons. Really, my dear--” she indicated the state of her habit, patched and muddy, “--do I_look _rich to you?” 

Mary chuckled hoarsely. “You? No. But that castle you live at... we've heard rumors, haven't we, lads?

Mutters and nods from the bandits, a few grins. “Aye,” continued Mary. “A chap named Diesis from over Wymbdon way, will swear blind once he's in his cups that you people from the castle bring heaving bags of gold with you, only to give him rocks when he asks so politely. Now, I take salt with every word from that scoundrel's mouth, but I know you, Peace-- as shrewd a girl for a coin as I ever knew. If there's money in that castle waiting? You'll know of it, alright.

“And you'll tell of it to Hairy Mary, as well. For old times' sake.”

Peace quirked a brow. “You won't believe me if I say the most money I've ever seen there are the imaginary sums I wager with the old steward over cards, will you?”

“No, lass, I'm afraid not.”

“A pity,” Peace said crisply, “since it's true. Well, what then? Going to kill me?”

“Eventually,” growled one of the men nearby. Peace winced. Partly for the fact that Piety's claws were digging into her spine through her habit, to be sure, but...

“Now now, lads,” said Mary, her grin splitting her beard. “Peace here can see reason. Jill, what did they have in the way of defenders?”

Jillian laughed, and spat into the dirt. “A deaf-mute held my horse's reins, Mama. A buzzard yammered on so as to slay me with boredom, and a slip of a girl dandled a brat.”

Mary nodded, slowly, her eyes locked with Peace's. “It's not what we'll do to  _ you, _ Sister,” she said. “I know how to get to a Solicitine's heart: through  _ others.” _

Peace closed her eyes, briefly, and wrapped the fingers of one hand around her cross.  _ O Lord, I know you're always listening and watching... a little more physical help wouldn't go amiss either... _

“Stop that,” hissed a low voice right in her ear, and she jerked her eyes open to see Leeds grimacing on her shoulder. “I can't think straight when you're _ praying _ like that, yechh! And stop touching the cross! It makes me itch!”

Peace cast a half-second's glance over to Mary and the rogues, but none of them showed the slightest sign of hearing or seeing the little demon. She sighed, and muttered low, “Leeds... now is maybe not the time...”

“Sister, how'd you like to make a deal?” Leeds purred, his yellow eyes gleaming.

“Oh, get  _ lost,”  _ Peace hissed, and two of the bandits glanced at each other. “Er.... not you, gentlemen.”

Leeds chuckled in her ear. “Nothing big, Sis. No souls, no contracts in blood. All I want is the admission... the so-tiny admission... that I was right, and you were wrong. That this backstabbing bunch is waaaay past saving. Just give me that, Sis, and I'll have you out of this jam before you can say Ave Maria ten times fast. Back safe on the road home, pedaling away.”

“We're waiting, Peace,” said Mary, while Jillian admired her pistols.

“A moment to  _ pray, _ if you would,” Peace retorted, and lowered her head to hiss more quietly. “Leeds, you awful little rascal, I'm not making any deals with you, for whatever price you list. If you're not going to be useful, then go find a country bumpkin to tempt, would you?”

“Selfish, selfish,” purred the little demon, swinging his feet cheerfully from where he sat on her shoulder. “This isn't about  _ you,  _ you know. It's about all your friends up in the caa-aaa-stle. What's his face-- you know, the slow kid-- and the birdbrain, and the green sprog and his mom-- they're all in for it. You can stop it easy, if you'd just get over your big sanctified ego and admit you were wrong for once.”

Peace opened her mouth to reply-- then shut it, staring at the ground between her feet.

Was Leeds right? More than once she'd been called to task for a certain streak of.... stubbornness... at the Abbey. For years she'd persisted in thinking Mary could be brought back to the fold, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Had that been less out of a desire to see the other woman happy than it had her own desire to be  _ right? _

She looked up, past the crackling fire at the grim men who surrounded her. Mary stood with a small, triumphant smile half-hidden in her tangled grey beard.  _ Made a sucker of you, Peace! You really are a fool... You Solicitines never do learn. _

“Come  _ on, _ Mary,” grunted one of the ruffians, but their leader waved a hand at him. “Hush up lads, the good sister's thinking things over. Coming to her senses.”

Peace sighed, and folder her hands into her sleeves. She ought to be spinning them a clever story, she knew, of false gold buried somewhere in pirate caves beneath the castle-- yes, there'd be some way to play their greed into a way out of the situation. If she could just think of it.

If Leeds wasn't sitting on her shoulder, smug and insufferable, and if she wasn't thinking he was more than halfway right about her. Too clever for her own good, sometimes, like with the chicken dung. Too sure she could handle anything. Rackham had also been right.

But when the lives and safety of her friends hung in the balance...

“Alright,” she sighed under her breath, and the demon grinned slowly. “Leeds...”

“Ye-e-e-essssss?” he said, starting to jump up and down on her shoulder in anticipation. Peace closed her eyes, prepared to mouth the hated words of 'you were right'.

And that was when Piety, disgruntled by the jostling of the demon's feet on his comfortable, dry, hiding place, wriggled out from under her wimple with an outraged and blood-curdling squawk.

“Dear God in heaven--”

“What is th--”

“Shoot it!”

“\--she's called up a demon from hell--”

Peace decided the better part of valor was to duck, and did so, throwing herself onto the ground as crossbows twanged and sang around her, punctuated by the deafening bangs of pistols going off, the whole thing overlaid by Piety's mad shrieking and the flap of his wings. Men and women alike yelled, and cursed, and shoved.

“Demon from Hell?” hissed Leeds in outrage by her ear. “ _ That?  _ Oh, I'll show them demon from--”

She clamped a hand over Leeds' fanged mouth and shot a wary glance up. Piety was thirty feet up in a pine, quite comfortably perched and licking blood from one of his taloned feet. Around her, men staggered around clutching their bloodied faces-- but with a practiced eye, she judged none of their injures were severe, merely scratches and lashes from Piety's claws and tail. Their egos would be hurt more than their flesh--

No, wait, one person was down on the ground, the red-capped Jill bent over the prone figure.

Peace stood, knowing with a sick lurch in her gut what she would see before she did so.

Mary lay on the ground, hands clutching at her belly, blood already soaked through the leathers she wore and starting to seep into the damp pine needle carpet. The air smelt of gunpowder.

“Mama...” Jill moaned, sounding, now, as young as she looked.

Peace shook her head, and crossed over to mother and daughter, stepping over the fire's embers. She crouched on the other side of Mary's prone body, and gently but firmly pried Mary's rough, chapped hands from her bleeding gut.

“What are you doing?” hiccuped Jill, with a stare too pained to be hostile. Her eyes were very like her mother's, Peace thought.

“Get me my bag from the velocipede,” Peace answered, and started looking at the wound.

By the time Jill came back with the satchel, she already knew it was too late. The shot had fragmented inside the other woman's gut, and there was simply too much blood spilling out, onto her hands and habit. She did what she could.

“There's wine in the tent, a small bottle,” Peace told the girl as she wrapped a bandage around Mary's perforated belly. The girl ran to grab it, and Peace settled Mary's head into her own lap.

“Mary,” she said, quietly. “Do you have anything you would like to confess?”

Mary hadn't spoken yet, laid still under the ministrations of Peace's hands. Now she looked up at her, licked her bloodied lips, and breathed shallow.

“It was me put that snake into Helga's bed,” she said after a slow minute had ticked by.

“Yes, I knew,” Peace said, and started crumbling a macaroon for the Eucharist.

***

Peace watched as Mary's body was taken away on the shoulders of six burly highwaymen, some still bleeding from scratches on their faces, all of them subdued. “They'll bury her?” she asked Jill.

The girl started at the sound of her voice, her arms wrapped around her body still. “We have our own ways to handle our dead,” she said hoarsely, and Peace nodded.

The girl stared at her a moment, then said, softly, “Why did you do it?”

“Do what?” Oh, between the mud and the blood this was going to set something awful, although it was true Dinah could work wonders...

“Make her as comfortable as you could. With the wine. And all. I mean...” Jill studied the ground, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “We... tricked out here. We were gonna hurt you if we had to. Why didn't you just laugh her right off?”

Peace tilted her head back and looked at the canopy of pine overhead. Somewhere behind those green dripping branches was the clouded sky, and somewhere beyond that...

“I'm a Solicitine. We  _ help people. _ It's what we do.” She sighed. “And what your mother never understood. Piety, come down now, you little guardian devil.”

Jill flinched as the kyrkogrim swooped down and resumed its position on her shoulder, but said nothing. Peace watched her from the corner of her eye, taking in that, yes, she was quite like her mother-- but not the same, no, no entirely. An arch to the nose, a softness to the lips.

Although-- was that-- a rather dark and coarse sort of fuzz sprouting on that set chin?

“You should look us up sometime,” Peace said briskly, and had the satisfaction of watching Jill look taken aback at the idea.

“Huh. I doubt any ol' convent would have room for someone who shot her own m-- her dumb nanny goat of a mother,” Jill said, looking away into the trees.

“You'd be surprised,” Peace said, and turned for her velocipede. None of the remaining bandits raised a hand to stop her. Piety, perched fiercely on her shoulder, may have had something to do with that. 

The Lord works in mysterious ways...

***

She had the Castle once more in sight, and was looking forward to a long, hot bath if at all possible, when Leeds graced her with his presence again, his furry head sticking out of the basket. He said nothing for several minutes, and neither did she, merely letting him sulk away.

“You  _ were _ going to say it,” he growled as she began to pedal up the last incline. “You were, you  _ were.” _

“I was,” she responded with equanimity. “But I've thought it over, and I have an addendum.”

He sighed, and flopped back into the basket, his feet raised to the clearing sky. “Alright, what's that.”

“Leeds,” Peace began with a weary smile, “You were right. I can't save everyone.”

“HA!” crowed the demon, waving the leathery soles of his feet in triumph. “.....and?”

“Just because  _ I _ can't save everyone-- doesn't mean they can't  _ be _ saved.”

There was a pondering silence from the basket, and then he shot her a yellow-eyed glare over the top of the basket, once more right-side-up. “That's cheating.”

“Is not.”

“Is so. It's invoking  _ Him. _ Cheating.”

“'L ean  _ not _ upon  _ thine _ own understanding,' I believe the Scriptures say....”

“Grah!!!  _ That's _ cheating too! Don't you make my ears  _ itch _ like that, you... you... you  _ Solicitine!” _

“Sorry,” Peace said, unrepentantly. The last leg of the climb was steep and she stood on the velocipede's pedals to put her weight into it. There was a fresh wind off the ocean, bringing a sweet salt smell to her and the raucous noise of seagulls. She took deep breaths, letting the wind lift some of the weight from her shoulders.

Her habit would have to be cleaned. Rackham would have to be told of the bandits in the area, and to be a bit more careful of how much gold they flashed in Wymbdon. The velocipede would likely need some repairs from Iron Henry's steady hands. And she herself, well.... she knew it would take some time to forget what it felt like, to be helpless to help. In any of a number of ways.

But Leeds had been right about that, too-- you could only save those who wanted it.

And besides. Time enough for work tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day after that. Time enough for worry, for grief, for what-could-have-been-done-differently and whether or not anything  _ would _ be done differently in Jill's life than in her mother's. 

_Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof._

For today... for today, there was a glorious sunset she was just in time to catch, the sinking sun painting the waves and rainclouds golden. A view to enjoy, from the battlements of the Castle Waiting, where such misery as she'd encountered today was granted only intermittent entrance, and one could believe that the world was a better and brighter place.

She gave Leeds the last macaroon. It only seemed fair, after having deprived him of her crisis of faith.


End file.
